Reading List (year two)

Well, I haven't posted a hell of a lot lately on this blog, but I have been gaming steadily, and I have been reading continuously. Perhaps blogging inspiration will return this year... perhaps not. Anyway, here are the books I read this year with useful game ideas.

• The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolfe (A+)
• Kraken, China Mieville (C-)
• Reamde, Neal Stephenson (A-)
• The Emperor of Dreams, Clark Ashton Smith (B)
• Slow Apocalypse, John Varley (B+)
• The Fuller Memorandum, Charles Stross (C)
• Light, M John Harrison (B+)
• Postsingular, Rudy Rucker (C)
• Hylozoic, Rudy Rucker (D)
• The Gunslinger, Stephen King (C+)
• Drawing of the Three, Stephen King (C-)
• The Waste Lands, Stephen King (C)

I'll try to add actual commentary to these as I go along, beyond just a dorky rating system that simply attempts to quantify how much I liked the book.

Attending Daedalus

Deserted Estuary by Bruce Pennington

By coincidence I came across a used copy of Attending Daedalus by Peter Wright around the time I was finishing reading Solar Labyrinth by Robert Borski. Borski's book had a lot of tantalizing theories about Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun in it (even if I am inclined to only agree with around 60% of them), but seemed to focus only on the puzzles and mysteries of the series without actually discussing Wolfe's literary techniques. Attending Daedalus is definitely a good remedy for that, examining Wolfe's writing style and its effect on the reader throughout his career, with specific emphasis on the Book of the New Sun. Wright's writing tends to be overly-academic and dry (it was an English dissertation after all), but he illuminates the complexity of Wolfe's genius in a way that I may have intuitively grasped, but without an intellectual understanding the process involved.

All in all, my re-reading of Wolfe's Book of the New Sun, along with the various analysis of other authors, has deepened my already reverent appreciation of his works to a level of almost baffled mystification. How can he be so good?

Reading List (year one)

Not so much an "Appendix N" as simply the stuff I've been reading over the last year that has some quality of gaming inspiration, one way or the other. Lately, I've been rereading my personal holy grail to that end of things, The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolfe, although this time through I have Michael Andre-Driussi's Lexicon Urthus on the nightstand as well for further edification. After I finish the series I plan to pick up Robert Borski's Solar Labyrinth as a final delve into the layered mysteries of Wolfe's world creation.

• Peace, Gene Wolfe (A)
• Kingdom Come, JG Ballard (B)
• Wireless, Charles Stross (B+)
• Zero History, William Gibson (B-)
• The Tree of Life, Israel Regardie
• Home Fires, Gene Wolfe (A-)
• Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Jorge Luis Borges (A-)
• City of Saints and Madmen, Jeff VanderMeer (D)
• Imaginal Reality, Aaron Daniels
• Holy Fire, Bruce Sterling (C+)
• Magical Circles in the Grimoire Tradition, William Kiesel
• Promethea, Alan Moore (B)